Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Ferry Ride

There's one very special thing about Seattle that you don't see in too many other American cities, and that's the Washington State ferry system that will take you to, among other places, Bremerton, Vashon Island, Whidbey Island, and a number of other places across Puget Sound (that's pronounced "Pew-Jet Sound")

Last Friday, on the way home from the in-laws house in Mount Vernon, I called 511 on my phone and found out that our arrival in Seattle was PERFECT for me to fly off the freeway's express lanes off of Columbia street, straight down to the waterfront, and that light would take me right to the ferry terminal, where we wouldn't have to wait more than 10 minutes for a ferry run to Bremerton.

Nora saw the ferry Kaleetan and said "BIG BOAT!" and was VERY excited to ride on it. We boarded at 11:10, ran around the lower decks, then went and had lunch on the upper deck's cafeteria before running around some more.

I was delighted to see that the boats have been fitted with a lot of new safety gear that keeps 2-year-olds from sliding into the Sound...and Nora just had a blast running free for our trip across the water.

Once in Bremerton, we only needed to drive a few minutes to my sister's house instead of the hour it would have taken to drive "around" and across the Tacoma Narrows bridge.